


Crimson Cloak Versus The Red Falcon!

by Azzandra



Series: The Crimson Cloak [3]
Category: Girl Genius (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen, Masked Vigilante AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:20:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25133041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azzandra/pseuds/Azzandra
Summary: It stands to reason that any hero in the business for long enough eventually acquires a nemesis.
Series: The Crimson Cloak [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1133597
Comments: 50
Kudos: 74





	1. Chapter 1

There was a certain theatricality to being the Crimson Cloak that Agatha found not only fun, but immensely useful for getting the drop on certain enemies.

In this case, as Agatha crashed through the glass of Professor Eckleherbert's sunroof, landing in a crouch with shards of the window plinking down around her and off her heavy cloak, she was certain she had gotten the drop on him.

"Professor Eckleherbert!" she declared, brandishing her ray gun. "Surrender now! Your plans... have been... foiled?"

She trailed off as her brain caught up with her eyes, and stood in the middle of the room, baffled by the fact that Professor Eckleherbert was in fact, at that very moment, not attempting to melt her with his sun-powered mirror cannon, because he was hogtied and gagged on top of his own workbench.

This... was not how these things usually went down, in Agatha's experience, and she eyed the professor suspiciously, wondering if he had adapted his powerful reflective technology to producing holographic images.

She at least convinced herself that wasn't the case when she walked up to him and poked him. Professor Eckleherbert growled unhappily from behind his gag, and it sounded like the things he was trying to say were none too complimentary, if one were to judge by the tone of his muffled mouth noises.

Agatha took a look around the room, trying to determine what had happened. Other than the debris of her entrance, which Agatha now winced at having produced, it seemed there were signs of minor struggle. A mirrored lens was on the ground next to the workbench, and a chair was knocked over. Someone had probably caught Professor Eckleherbert hard at work upgrading his mirror cannon.

Which, Agatha was unhappy to note, was nowhere in sight.

Had the professor been robbed? Had another hero swooped in just before she did, incapacitating the professor and taking away his powerful toy before he could make good on his promise to melt the town?

She could simply ungag Professor Eckleherbert and ask, but she'd gotten enough of an earful from him by this point to not want to hear any more rants from him.

Instead, her eyes fell on a nearby corkboard. Pinned to it, over the blueprints to Professor Eckleherbert's plans for the glass garden that would replace the town once he melted it to slag, was an envelope. The red ink on the front addressed the letter to The Crimson Cloak. This was not Professor Eckleherbert's hand-writing, which tended towards the crazed doctor scribbles end of the spectrum more than the elegant calligraphy one.

She opened the envelope to discover a note inside, and a ticket.

" _Dear Crimson Cloak--_

_Should you wish to recover Professor Eckleherbert's mirror canon, I invite you to meet me two nights from now. I have borrowed it for an experiment of my own._

_One wonders what effects it would have upon a crowd of hapless onlookers, should they be caught in its beam as it reflects off a conveniently angled stream of falling water. I believe the Professor speculates in his notes regarding the 'instant explosive iridization' effect this would produce. Fascinating._

_~The Red Falcon_ "

Agatha blinked at the note, written in the same red ink and elegant cursive. Then, she looked at the ticket which had been enclosed with it as well. 

It was a box seat for an upcoming production of _The Waterfalls of Venice_ by Reichenbach.

"I don't suppose you know anything about this," Agatha said, holding the ticket in Professor Eckleherbert's line of sight.

The professor gave the ticket a puzzled look and grunted some vaguely interrogatory sound.

"I didn't think so," Agatha sighed, and placed the letter and the ticket back into the envelope, pocketing it inside her cloak.

There was some commotion from outside, probably the authorities preparing to stream in and sort things out. She'd leave Professor Eckleherbert to them; it seemed she suddenly had a new opponent to sort out.

* * *

"I've never been to an opera," Agatha said, as she took apart her ray gun and spread out the pieces across the expanse of the table. Her sleeves were rolled up, and her hair was tied back with a scrap of some red material, giving her the air that she was settled in to work. "The most I've seen have been Heterodyne plays."

"Hardly the same thing," Martellus said, lifting the welding mask from his face to display his disdain properly. "We should take you to a real opera. They're putting on Reichenbach's _Storm King_ again."

Agatha snorted softly, giving a lopsided smile to the strewn guts of the ray gun.

"I don't know, my uncle saw the _Storm King_ opera once, and the way he talks about it, apparently it's on par with Heterodyne roadshows for historical accuracy," Agatha said. 

"Why?" Martellus asked. "What did he say about it?"

"Oh, you know. Just the usual," Agatha shrugged, and then looked up at Martellus, surprised by the woundedness he was displaying. His shoulders were hunched defensively. Misinterpreting which part of her remark had disturbed him, she rushed to add, "It's nothing to do with the opera, it's just the usual Mechanicsburg sentiment. Nobody back home likes the Storm King. He did misplace a Heterodyne, you know."

"Who said Andronicus Valois was the one to misplace her?" Martellus asked, astounded. "She was the one who ran before the wedding."

"I know that's what some people out here think," Agatha sighed, "and I'm not saying it's completely inconsistent with Old Heterodyne behavior. But there are people in Mechanicsburg who are to this day wondering where Euphrosynia went all that time ago, so trust me, that part came as a surprise to everyone, not just the Storm King."

Martellus stared at Agatha for a minute, mulling over this information.

"...Does nobody outside Mechanicsburg know that?" she asked uncertainly.

"People out here tend to not believe half the things any given Mechanicsburger tells them," Martellus said, raking back his hair. "I always wondered-- well, I suppose if even Mechanicsburg doesn't know what happened to her..."

"Sometimes..." Agatha trailed off and shrugged. "She wouldn't be the first Heterodyne to disappear mysteriously. A lot of the old family lived rough lives and had very _unpleasant_ ends. Trust me, I've heard plenty about that growing up. Euphrosynia, though? That's a real mystery, even to Mechanicsburg."

Martellus shook his head, looking thoughtfully into the distance the way he sometimes did when he had to do math in his head. Agatha wondered what, precisely, in this particular conversation would have him calculating like that, but she'd learned Martellus could be very odd about some things, so she took it in stride.

"About _The Waterfalls of Venice_ ," Martellus started, once his train of thought finally reached its station.

"They're going to have real waterfalls!" Seffie's voice interjected, and both Agatha and Martellus turned to see her in the doorway, posing dramatically against the door frame. "They brought in a Spark from Paris to do set design, I hear. Half our family is going to be at this show."

"Yes, precisely," Martellus added. "That's why I think Agatha shouldn't go."

"What?" Agatha burst out, whipping around to look at Martellus with a sense of betrayal. "Why?"

Seffie made a warning sound, a preamble to all her lectures against trying to control Agatha, but Martellus took no heed of it.

"You shouldn't go," he repeated, "because _our family_ will be there. I don't know what this Red Falcon person is about, but I wouldn't be surprised if he was some sort of bait, and trust me, you don't want to let the family sink their claws into you. There's a reason we keep them away from you."

"What could they possibly want from me?" Agatha asked, growing stubborn.

"You're a Heterodyne," Martellus stressed. "You don't want to find out what kind of uses some people in our family would have for you, believe me." He looked particularly grim as he placed a hand on Agatha's shoulder, its weight insistent like a plea for her full attention. "If I can't stop you from going, you have to at least believe me when I tell you that you would not be able to trust anyone there."

Agatha seemed at least mollified by Martellus acknowledging that he probably wouldn't be able to stop her, but she cast a sidelong glance to Seffie as well.

Seffie was not saying anything, but her lips were pursed reprovingly. Though if she was displeased, Agatha could tell it wasn't at Martellus in particular. They'd both joked before about their family being awful, but Agatha hadn't considered until now that those horrible things they were always saying about the family might not have been entirely exaggerated. Martellus seemed genuinely concerned for her safety.

"I'm not going to trust anyone but you two," Agatha said. "And it's not like I wouldn't have been careful anyway. This is an incredibly obvious trap."

She looked from Seffie back to Martellus, as she patted the hand on her shoulder in what she hopped was a reassuring manner.

"I'm going into this eyes open, believe me," she said. 

Martellus didn't seem entirely convinced, but he didn't argue the point.

"I suppose I'll have to be there anyway," he conceded. "You wouldn't be opposed to some back-up, I trust?"

Agatha broke into a grin, now that he had acquiesced to her going to the opera, and in an excess of zeal, she threw her arms around him in a hug. Martellus was taken aback enough by this gesture that he gave Seffie a disbelieving look over Agatha's head. Seffie gave him an exasperated look and an encouraging gesture in return, and so he took the opportunity and hugged Agatha back.

* * *

They would be attending the opera in a dirigible, some sort of pleasure craft that the Blitzengaard family owned, medium-sized and decked out with only the most luxurious amenities. Luckily, in a family with Sparks, one of the absolutely must-have amenities was a lab, and that was where Agatha and Martellus spent the entire journey, making last-minute adjustments to Agatha's boots and the repulsor device integrated into their soles.

That was where Seffie found them as they approached the opera house, and she sashayed in with a sweep of powder-blue skirts to find Martellus with a screwdriver in hand.

Seffie took a look at the tailcoat hanging over the backrest of a chair, the rolled up sleeves of Martellus' silk shirt, and the way his cravat was hanging around his neck undone, and she made an almost pained sound.

"Martellus," Seffie spoke quite pointedly, and in a tone that cut even through her brother's Spark fugue, "unless you are intending to rappel down with Agatha, I will have you know I have no intention of showing up at the opera with you in such a state."

Martellus looked down at himself almost sheepishly. 

"That's my fault, Seffie," Agatha said, picking up her boots and hastily pulling them on. There were quite a few laces to do up, and she hopped on one foot as she tied them up without sitting down. "I thought of some adjustments to-- oh, I hope I didn't make you late!"

"It's not one of Reichenbach's better operas, anyway," Martellus grumbled, earning himself a sharp look from Seffie. But he rolled down his sleeves, smoothing them out carefully, and then pulled his coat on. He walked over to a nearby cabinet, squinting into the reflection in its glass door as he began working on his cravat next.

"I just came to say we'll be docking soon," Seffie said, and slapped Martellus' hands away to work the knot on his cravat herself. "So anyone who doesn't want to leave this dirigible by walking out--"

"Got it," Agatha grinned, brandishing her grappling gun. 

It was, after all, only a short way down, and if the line wasn't long enough, she always had her boots to cushion the landing. True, she'd gotten a ticket to the opera from this Red Falcon, whoever he was, but it wasn't like she was going to be showing up as a spectator. Her work was going to be, quite literally, behind the scenes.

"Good luck," Martellus said, just as Agatha was leaving.

Agatha paused at the door to give him a look over her shoulder.

"I think the expression is 'break a leg'!" she corrected.

"As long as it isn't your own," Martellus shrugged in response. Agatha was already out the door when he said it, so he didn't think she would have heard, but he heard her laughter down the hallway anyway.


	2. Chapter 2

It was just as expected, though that didn't mean Martellus had to be happy about it; the opera house was simply crawling with relatives. One look over the crowd gathered in chattering groups throughout the lobby turned up more red hair and affected laughter than a family reunion.

It made something itch at the back of his head. Something like suspicion.

"My, my," Seffie said, her voice soft as she spoke through a sharp smile, "how has the word gotten around to so much of the family, I wonder?"

She had taken his arm, and she was close enough to speak without being overheard if she was careful, but still, they made sure to keep their distance from any eavesdroppers as they moved through the crowd.

"You think this is deliberate?" Martellus asked, after following the line of Seffie's thoughts.

"If someone in the family wants to make contact with Agatha," Seffie said, her lips almost unmoving as she nodded in greeting to a distant aunt, "then I can think of no better way to obfuscate who they are than by stirring up this much sediment in such a small pond."

Martellus snorted, reminded of a brief aquarium phase he'd gone through when he was eleven years old. He'd created a tiny cuttlefish construct that hunted by stirring up the sand and attacking its prey unawares. He'd had to unfortunately dispatch the creature when it developed air-breathing lungs and expanded its menu to mimmoths. It looked like it was going to work its way up to less dispensable prey soon enough.

He wondered if this meant he would have to dispatch some other relative after this night, before they too began hunting above their place in the food chain.

"Heads up," Seffie warned, right before she tugged on his arm to turn them around. That was all the warning Martellus had before Seffie put on her insufferably friendly voice and said, "Anevka! Darling, how lovely to see you out and about!"

Martellus made a face, probably, but he made sure to smooth it out as he turned around to see Anevka and--sure enough, following in his sister's shadow like a wheely-toy being pulled on a string was Tarvek, with his insufferable smug face.

Seffie and Anevka did their usual greeting of kissing the air in front of each other's cheeks without actually touching, while Tarvek and Martellus made steely eye contact and nodded at each other in what was an admirable mummery of civility.

"It's so good to get out once in a while," Anevka sighed dramatically. "I swear, Seffie, It's like Father doesn't even care that they're putting on a Reichenbach."

"Oh, goodness, Anevka, you didn't manage to drag him out of his den, did you?" Seffie asked.

"No, no, he's still in Sturmhalten," Anevka said, fluttering a hand in dismissal. She seemed all the happier for it.

"To be fair, it's not as if _Waterfalls_ is one of Reichenbach's better works," Tarvek intejected haughtily.

"It has its merits," Martellus gritted out, just to be contrary. Tarvek sniffed with superiority.

"It must, with the audience it's garnered tonight," Anevka remarked.

From there on, she and Seffie launched into a detailed discussion of recent shows and trends in the theater, and Tarvek seemed to be paying rapt attention to this conversation, interjecting with his own commentary ever so often. Martellus let the inane chatter wash over him, instead, as he assessed his cousin.

If anyone had any vested interest in meeting Agatha, it was Tarvek. The Knights of Jove agreed that he had the better claim, and if not for Martellus having made contact with the Heterodyne girl first and entrenching himself firmly as her ally, he had no doubt dear cousin Tarvek would have snatched her up and worked her over with his oily charms until she was firmly in his power. Given any opportunity, he might still manage it, somehow. 

Much to Martellus' relief, they reached the discreet curtains of the private boxes, and Tarvek and Anevka had to walk on to their own. Not that Seffie and Anevka seemed to want to split off quite yet, as they were in the middle of some acidic gossip about one of their other cousins. Martellus found himself having to make further eye contact with Tarvek.

"I'm surprised you even came, if you hate this play so much," Martellus muttered.

"Yes, well," Tarvek sniffed, "I heard there were going to be real waterfalls. And also, Anevka is holding my best dinner jacket hostage."

"Ah. That explains it, then," Martellus snorted.

* * *

Agatha did not use the ticket she received as gift. Or, to be more precise, she did not use the seat. But the ticket itself had to have some sort of significance, because the Red Falcon had to have known that she would not simply plop herself in that seat and serve herself on a platter.

It was a simple matter of triangulation to figure out the spot in the rafters that offered the best direct view to the box, and then a bit more work to figure out all angles from which that spot could be observed, a minor statistical fugue to narrow down the most likely location for an observer to conceal themselves, and--

Well, the entire thing was rendered moot, anyway, because Agatha decided to take the direct approach. She dropped onto the wide beam that offered its direct view of the box seat, in the rafters right above the opera's scenery-operating mechanisms. 

That was the thing about being both a Spark and a hero, Agatha supposed. At some point you had to realize that even if you could divide by zero, that didn't mean you should. Better to force a confrontation than to be given the runaround.

The beam was wide enough under Agatha's feet, and even if it weren't, her boots could keep her glued to it. What might have concerned her more was the fact that, once the opera started, so would the the mechanisms that operated the scenery and props. The building of the opera house was more Sparkwork than masonry by this point, and a real waterfall wasn't even the most elaborate thing it could do. Agatha just hoped she wouldn't be ground up in its spokes by the time the night was over.

She could see, even in its immobile state, that the elaborate innards of the opera house would be difficult for anyone not a Spark to deal with.

Was this a gamble on the Red Falcon's part? Or was it a test? Surely Red Falcon had to be a Spark, to want this kind of battleground for a confrontation with the Crimson Cloak. In which case--

Agatha tried for a moment to distance herself from the fact that she knew herself. What could someone learn from the scandal rags that plastered Crimson Cloak on its front page? That Crimson Cloak was a hero, someone mindful of concealing her identity, and that she used a wide array of gadgets.

Ah, but devices could be borrowed, bought or obtained in any number of ways. It could be reasonably assumed that the Crimson Cloak was a Spark herself, and built all her equipment, but in order to confirm that, someone would have to see her in action. Up close.

Navigating the insides of a Sparkwork building, perhaps?

Agatha did not like the thought of what that could mean. It felt too much like someone prying at her secret identity, as though chipping away facts and data could help them uncover who she was. She would have to be careful.

But then, two could play that game, couldn't they? And from the small clanks she deployed throughout the rafters, clever little things that could handle Sparkwork just as easily as any Spark, she knew that no apparent Red Falcon had shown up yet. If she had to guess, it wouldn't be until the house lights went out that her opponent would appear.

That was fine. Agatha could wait.

* * *

When it came to solving mysteries, one person who was having more active success in following a line of inquiry that evening was Gilgamesh Wulfenbach. The chain of events that led him to the opera house was somewhat more haphazard than the breadcrumbs laid out for Crimson Cloak. For one, Gil was fairly certain the Red Falcon wouldn't be expecting him. 

But then, neither would be Crimson Cloak. Gil had found out about this bizarre rendezvous from the embittered Professor Eckleherbert, who was not only furious about the theft of his mirror cannon, but was additionally livid that the 'sanguine git' who tied him up had used him to set up an opera date with the Crimson Cloak. Gil understood why Eckleherbert had been gagged about halfway through a rant with more synonyms for the color red than Gil had known existed. He'd sent the ranting professor off with the small brigade of Wulfenbach forces who'd come to apprehend him, and then gone off on his own.

And--alright, maybe it was the 'opera date' part that made Gil do a double-take and involve himself in this situation, except he was fairly certain that was only a figure of speech, and the Crimson Cloak was actually in danger from this shady individual.

It was for stealth alone that Gil decided to sneak into the opera through the back ways, and certainly not because the tickets had been sold out and he didn't have the necessary connections to secure a seat for himself. He probably would have come in through the back anyway, there was just less chance of his father asking embarrassing questions. Or at least lower odds of questions, and higher quotient of embarrassment if Gil lost that roll of the die.

At this point, he was willing to risk it.

The backstage was a flurry of activity, not only because of the crew and cast members running about, but also because of the gigantic gears turning and spinning overhead; in the chaos, it was easy for Gil to just slip by and go wherever he wanted, overlooked and unimportant.

* * *

Agatha thought she had a good feel for the workings of the opera's mechanisms. It was an enthralling sight to witness, even more so than watching an actual show would be. Small wonder nobody sold tickets for this part, instead, though she supposed anyone short of a Spark would grow slightly mad trying to parse the complicated mechanics at play.

She felt the eyes on the back of her head before she even heard the voice.

"You accepted my invitation. How delightful!"

Agatha turned around with a sweep of her cloak, but still careful not to get caught in the teeth of a nearby gear making its way near the beam she was occupying.

The Red Falcon had styled himself with an eye for drama: red vest piped with gold over a dark purple shirt, matching wide-brimmed red hat with its large white feather; the rapier on his hip, and a mask over his eyes. If he had been a character ripped from some opera, Agatha would have believed it. Maybe the choice of location had more to do with Red Falcon than with her, but then this raised the question of what he wanted.

"There are better ways of setting up a meeting than threatening to obliterate an audience full of innocent people," Agatha replied, her tone flat compared to his own operatic delivery.

"Yet, one cannot argue with the results," Red Falcon replied.

"Alright, you have me here," Agatha shrugged. "What now?"

The waterfall had not yet appeared from the bowel of the opera machinery. The scene that required it was at the climax of the second act, and there were yet a few different set pieces the backdrop would cycle through before it got to that one. Had the mirror cannon been set up in the rotation of props, so it would pop out with the waterfall? Or was Red Falcon holding it in store for this confrontation? It depended, Agatha suspected, on the type of scene Red Falcon had written in his head.

"Now, my dear Crimson Cloak," Red Falcon declared, removing his rapier from its sheath, "we do as the play dictates. _En garde_!"

He was already lunging towards her with uncanny speed, and though Agatha's hand was already wrapped around the telescopic blade she always carried on her belt, it still took what felt like an eternity for the sword to extend to its full length. She parried the blow awkwardly, but used Red Falcon's momentum to dodge out of the way and nearly send him hurtling off the beam. 

He did some complicated footwork, stopped himself before falling face-first into the swiveling gearworks below, and caught an overhead pipe to swing around and come at Agatha from a different angle.

They clashed again, came apart, ducked as a rotating lever swung overhead, and retreated to opposite ends of the beam as they looked one another over critically.

This Red Falcon, Agatha realized, was not the frivolous ponce he styled himself as. He was trained and dangerous.

She was, as he said, on her guard.


	3. Chapter 3

The first act hadn't even wrapped up yet, but Martellus couldn't quite make himself wait for the intermission. He was not really invested enough in the story or the characters to muster concern over the confusing love octagon, except insofar as he was waiting for the second act to start killing off some of the more extraneous love interests, so he decided to do something more productive than watch a thirteen minute long aria about the protagonist's dating woes.

Seffie gave him a look as he slipped out of their private box and out past the curtain, but he gave her a wave in return, dismissing her concern. How much trouble could he get into at the opera?

A lot, he realized, as he discreetly peered into neighboring boxes. There were plenty of his relatives here.

And maybe he wasn't the only one who came with an alternate agenda. Anevka slipped out into the hallway just as he was heading into the direction of the Sturmvoraus family box, and they spotted one another immediately. They were far too close to politely ignore one another as they passed past each other.

"Already plotting to escape?" Martellus asked, walking towards her like that was what he'd been intending to begin with. 

"Were that I could escape my brother," Anevka sighed, hand fluttering to her chest like it ached her, "but I fear his commentary will follow me all the way home." 

Then, like an idea just occurred--and that was inaccurate, because things did not just occur to someone like Anevka--her face brightened and she looked Martellus over.

"Say, Tweedle," she began, a slow smile spreading over her face, "how would you like to switch?"

"Switch?"

"Certainly. I can go sit with Seffie, and you and Tarvek can grouse about the play all you would like. Win-win!"

"No!" Martellus said, and at the same time Tarvek's voice came from beyond the curtain with the same vehemence: "Absolutely not!"

Anevka pouted, wheedled, presented a few more arguments, but Martellus made a few more blunt refusals and extricated himself from the conversation with all due haste. He was not spending this already irritating play sitting with his most annoying cousin.

After extricating himself from Anevka's grasp, he continued to make the rounds quietly, but he could find nothing amiss; it seemed nobody else was taking this opportunity to skulk as he was, and Martellus had to turn back with the upsetting conclusion that he was the one acting most suspicious out of anyone else there.

When he returned to his seat, Seffie gave him a questioning glance.

"I hope she has more success," Martellus muttered, and Seffie knew who he meant.

* * *

Agatha was, in fact, finding moderate success only in not getting crushed between the gears of the opera house.

She'd started out feeling intrigued by the entire mechanism, but now, as she was bouncing around its insides, trying to have a sword fight in an inadvertent death trap, she could empathize with the frustration the town must have felt when they hired a Spark to install a clock on their opera house and he decided to throw in all these extras as well.

A gout of flame shot past her leg, though luckily the fireproof material of her cloak kept her from being roasted. "Oh, come on, what's that thing even for?" she muttered unhappily, and swung on a loose bit of chain down to the ground level.

"Growing tired?" Red Falcon asked, ceding the higher ground so he could drop into an elegant swoop on the ground floor as well.

"Why are you even doing this? Do you need the workout so badly you'd willingly endanger people?" Agatha replied.

They circled each other warily. Agatha had tried shooting him with one of her small death rays--one with a stun setting, just to be fair--but he had managed to disarm her before she got a good shot in. He did the same with her second death ray, and her third. She decided, as she saw the third death ray clang down and before lost among shifting walls, that she might as well keep her last on in reserve.

He had a fighting style that Agatha could only describe as frustrating. He was quick, and he was sneaky, but the dangerous part was that he knew how to manipulate the battle. She noticed it around the time she felt the death ray being ripped from her hand with a little flourish of the rapier, and she tested it with the subsequent weapons she pulled out, but now she was pretty sure; this stranger had Smoke Knight training.

Which, admittedly, should have narrowed the pool of suspects, but considering how many Smoke Knights there were out there, Agatha didn't think it really did. Because Agatha didn't know the exact number, except guessing just by how many she saw hanging around Martellus and Seffie, and multiplying that by their family members, adding in the ones who failed Smoke Knight Training--

Red Falcon lunged, an uncharacteristically aggressive move compared to his strategy so far, and Agatha had to drop her mental calculations for now.

He might have been trained as a Smoke Knight, but Agatha had learned to fight from Jägers. On paper, that kind of fight sounded like a scalpel against a mallet, but it'd been a whole generation since anyone outside Mechanicsburg had had to take on a Jäger, so even if Smoke Knight training accounted for that particular kind of combatant, Agatha wagered this individual was too young to have come up against the genuine article. Even through his mask, she could see the widening of his eyes, the split second of surprise when she pulled off some maneuver like bouncing off a moving beam, or letting him stab through her cloak just so she could wrap it tight around his rapier and pull him in for a punch to the face.

The punch hadn't dislodged his mask, unfortunately, but then, maybe he was just used enough to getting clocked that he had made his mask to account for that. A bit of stage glue did go a long way.

They broke off from the mêlée to let a shifting curtain sweep between them--only fabric, not dangerous, but Agatha cursed under her breath as he disappeared from sight.

When the curtain swept away, and the music grew tense, Agatha noticed a sound like a rush of water.

The waterfall, she recalled, horrified that she'd forgotten about it.

The _mirror cannon_ , her mind supplied with greater alarm, as the floorboards swung around, and Professor Eckleherbert's mirror cannon emerged, bolted to the shifting platform.

"Now we see your choice, Crimson Cloak," Red Falcon taunted. 

And with that, he grabbed onto a nearby swinging chain, and let himself be picked up into the air, and hoisted out of sight.

Agatha growled, frustrated but clear on her course of action--it would have to be the mirror cannon, unfortunately. But before she could feel too badly about letting Red Falcon get away, she was met with the unexpected sight of a young man with brown hair springing out from the shifting mechanisms, and bounding in the direction Red Falcon had disappeared to.

"I've got him!" the young man shot over his shoulder, as he jumped up and started climbing much less gracefully than Red Falcon had.

Agatha, who didn't completely understand what all that was about, and hardly even remembered the young man had been someone she'd saved before, much less that he was also one Gilgamesh Wulfenbach, heir to the Wulfenbach Empire, gaped for only half a second before she decided to leave that question for later, and go disarm the cannon.

* * *

Gil thought he was doing great so far, considering he'd been flying by the seat of his pants the entire time. At the very least he hadn't fallen and been crushed to death in the gears of the opera house, though the suspicious individual he presumed to be Red Falcon was doing his best to encourage that outcome.

A series of perfectly timed leaps against the panels of the swiveling series had Red Falcon crossing the entire distance up to near the roof. Gil had a slightly clumsier ascent, because by the time he followed in Red Falcon's steps, the panels had already turned around to more awkward angles: instead of stepping on the flat end, Gil had to balance on the edges.

And then, when Gil painstakingly reached the highest point without breaking his neck, Red Falcon turned around and gave a petulant little smile and a wave, before holding onto his hat and jumping almost all the way back down.

Still, as annoying as Gil found this guy, he couldn't deny this was the best workout Gil had gotten since leaving Paris and his student hero days behind. It really brought him back--though, in fact, he'd learned a few things since then.

A bladed saw whirred in an abrupt downward path--oh, what the hell, what was that even for?--and Gil took advantage of the fact that he was the first to see it coming. When Red Falcon pulled short to avoid getting sawed in half, teetering on top of a pipe, one arm windmilling desperately, Gil jumped on a stationary platform just in front of him.

"Red Falcon, I presume?" Gil asked, as the villain himself looked up and startled. He recovered quickly, and under his mask, his expression grew intrigued.

"My debut has been more successful than anticipated, if my reputation already proceeds me," Red Falcon replied. "And, you are...?"

Gil opened his mouth to say something if not clever, then at the very least authoritative, but that was the exact moment the platform under his feet began rotating. He fumbled, flailed, lost his step--

\--and jumped to the nearest stable ground available, which was the same pipe Red Falcon was occupying.

For a dizzying moment, Gil expected a shove, or at least being allowed to plummet to his potential doom. Instead, an awkward shuffling of limbs and adjusting of weight ended with the two of them chest to chest, and Red Falcon's arm firmly around Gil's waist.

They teetered together, chest to chest, balanced against each other, until their equilibrium was regained, Red Falcon's arm still around Gil's waist, and Gil's hands grasping onto Red Falcon's shoulders in a parody of an embrace. Which happened to resemble a real embrace to a concering degree.

They looked at one another with equally mortified expressions, but a second ticked by, then another, and by that point it became too awkward not to address this.

"Uh... thanks?" Gil hazarded.

"Oh my god, I should have just let you fall," Red Falcon declared, his carefully-maintained theatricality suffering a slight crack with how shrill his voice turned.

Gil made an insulted sound, which was the one normal reaction he could muster in this confusing chain of events, before he was finally shoved backwards--though lightly enough that he had no difficulty getting his feet under him.

By the time he regained his balance, though, Red Falcon was already gone, billowing away behind a cloud of steam.

For the time being, Gil decided to just let it go.

* * *

By the time the opera wrapped up, the chatter had mostly turned to discussion of the set pieces. If anyone had noticed the performers on stage sweating more heavily than expected through their make-up, they hadn't connected this to the props around them seeming more... dynamic than usual.

Martellus had been just bored enough to try to discern from the hitches in the scenery mechanisms how well the fight backstage was going, but that only did so much to settle his nerves. He wasn't completely reassured of Agatha's success until he and Seffie met her back at the airship, and Agatha triumphantly presented a disassembled mirror cannon.

"And the Red Falcon?" Seffie asked as Martellus began sorting through the pieces.

Agatha sighed deeply, and took off her hat, turning it over in her hands as she frowned down at it.

"I don't think he had any serious intention of harming anyone," she said in the end, as conclusions finished percolating in her head in time with her fingers tracing the brim of her hat all the way around. "It felt like he was... assessing me, and dangling himself like a mystery for me to solve. If he has a trap in mind for me, I think he plans to lure me into it slowly." Then, Agatha narrowed her eyes as she added, "He had Smoke Knight training."

Martellus and Seffie exchanged a look; this was not unexpected, but it was unpleasant to have it confirmed.

"We will have to be very careful from here on out," Martellus said.

"Weren't we being careful already?" Agatha retorted. "What we need to do is cut this Red Falcon at the pass and find out who he is before he has time to set whatever his plan is into motion."

"That--" Martellus began, and at Seffie's sharp look, amended his tone, "remains to be discussed. We will make plans of our own, to be sure."

Agatha nodded once, tightly, apparently satisfied with this, but Martellus shared another look with Seffie. This entire thing has danger written all over, and with a true hero's instincts, Agatha's attitude when knowing a trap lay ahead was to run and spring it regardless.

Good thing she was not doing this whole hero business unsupervised, Martellus thought, not a little self-congratulatory.

* * *

"Well?"

"Well," Anevka replied, and removed the small transmitter from the hidden folds of her skirt, "the sound quality was good enough to fool Martellus, if nothing else."

She threw it at Tarvek, who caught it easily and turned it over. 

"He was at the very least convinced enough you were in the box to avoid you like the plague," Anevka continued. "Unless he was pretending."

Tarvek snorted. "I wouldn't credit him with that much acting ability, no."

"And you? I trust you didn't embarrass us in front of the _hero_ ," Anevka said, uttering that last word with so much amused contempt, that Tarvek felt it like a tooth ache.

"Ah. No."

Anevka's eyebrow rose slowly and pointedly at his response, and that was when Tarvek understood he fell shorter of convincing than he would have liked. He dropped the pretense and winced outright.

"You did!" Anevka accused. "You did embarrass yourself in front of the girl!"

"No, no, I did not," Tarvek said. "Also, my, how quickly we switch from embarrassing 'us' to embarrassing 'myself'."

"I stake no claim in it," Anevka declared, turning away like she was repudiating her brother. There was more drama in her performance than in the entire opera they'd just seen. "It is all in your hands, and on your head may it fall."

"Your moral support is an indispensable pillar of support in my life, truly," Tarvek replied, "but no, there was a different hitch I didn't expect. A meddler, of sorts."

He frowned, tapping a finger against the little device in his hand as he thought.

"A wildcard," Tarvek added more to himself.

Likely Anevka would suggest mere disposal. And it wouldn't be hard.

But. Could he use Gilgamesh Wulfenbach somehow in this game? Tarvek was already drawing up the possibilities in his mind. Complications, after all, were just advantages you hadn't gotten to utilize yet.


End file.
